Skip to main content

An Inksperiment

Some of you might know that I have a Thing for stationary. I could spend hours in Papersource looking at all the different cards and thick, crisp cardstocks; stamps, stickers, expensive washi papers, you name it I've probably gone through a phase where I was (or still am, who am I kidding?) obsessed with them. 

Inks, however, have always been a bit of a challenge to me. I love the concept of ink and fountain pens, but as a lefty actually using said pens is a bit hit-or-miss. Sometimes the angle at which I write means a fountain pen won't even work for me while other pens end up smearing down the side of my hand instead. Go figure. 

But when I heard that there was a place in Tokyo you could mix your own custom ink, I was sold. 

So a few Saturdays ago I made my online reservation and headed over to Inkstand by Kakimori, in Kuramae. 


The process is pretty simple. At your designated slot you sit at a counter. In front of you is a pad of paper, several small glass cups, a glass mixer, a fancy glass pen, and fourteen vibrant, pigment-perfect inks for you to experiment with.



Then for 45 minutes you are given free reign to mix inks as you will until you find a combination you like. Of course, you're encouraged to keep track of the ratios you use.


I had a color in mind--a turquoise/teal--so I mostly stuck with the blue and green spectrum of the inks, but, I saw some other people sitting near me making some truly iridescent ochres. 



At the end of my 45 minutes, when I found a ratio I liked (2 drops Dress Blue, 2 drops Puddle, 2 drops Lime Shock and 5 drops of Dilute, in case anyone is interested) I double-checked the color with the shop and popped out to wander around the area for an hour or so.  I went and bought a fountain pen (after extensive in-store testing!). When I returned, I was handed a bottle of my ink with its unique serial number that I can use for refills.

I feel rather classy and now I can say that, being the highbrow sort of person I am, that I do all MY editing in fountain pen. Thank you very much.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...
13 comments
Read more

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....
2 comments
Read more

In Praise of American Teachers

SPOILER ALERT: This post is going to be part rant, part commentary and part revelation, so be prepared for a lot of text and some opinions (which may be rather harsh). Since I've had about a week of school I think I'm just about qualified to make comments about the type of education in Japan, and a bit of confusion I have about world education rankings. Let me be rather blunt at first: a dull teacher at an American school is already more intersting than a teacher at a Japanese school. The best examples I have for this is comparing American math and science classes to Japanese math and science classes. Science and math classes that I've always had have been very teacher-student and student-student interactive, with discussions, questioning, and interactions with the material. Japanese math and science classes are completely lecture based, where the teacher either reads directly from the textbook or instructs the students to. Even when the teacher wrote on the chalkboard (y...
6 comments
Read more